Friday, June 3, 2011

+1?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you may or may not have heard of google's "facebook killer" (safe bet; the guess, not the "facebook killer" bet). I'm going to go out on another limb and say that this isn't a facebook killer. So what's the deal with this and why do all of these posts have a +1 button? What happens if I click that button? (If you don't see a +1 button anywhere, it means your computer is probably infected with a virus... either that or try going to the main Biocinematics page... or wait a few weeks for the feature to get rolled out in your area).

The deal is that this is Google's new way of trying to get people to "like" things; typically search results, but also other things like posts (c.f. the bottom of this post). It's not a bad idea, because it could be helpful to give feedback on good sites that are returned from a given search. If someone searches for "science animation" and something other than biocinematics comes up, it might be good to hit a +1 on that site if it's really relevant to science animation. Then your friends and contacts can see that you thought that site was cool and to "check it out" (not my words).

So... part of it is a "social networking" thing, and part of it is improving search results and ranking *cough*. If you don't have a google profile, it looks like you can't hit that +1 button, BUT, I believe you can create a google profile and make your "+1s" private if you so choose, which would probably make me more free with my +1 dolings out.

So why'd I even write a post on this new fangled e-button pushings? Partly cause I didn't feel like scanning my last sketch and posting it, but I still felt like posting something... and partly cause I want YOU (a few phalanges aimed in your general direction) to click on the +1 buttons on the posts you think are hip and/or rad and/or helpful.

Whaaaat? That was just all self-promotion? Sell-out!

Not so, not so. If you take note, I didn't tell you hit the "Share to Twitter", "Mail this", "Blog this", "Share to Facebook", or "Share to Google Buzz" buttons...